by Helen Grant
The question remained: was I going to curse Achim Zimmer? I stared down at my own hands, clasped as tightly as claws on the tabletop in front of me, and wondered why I even bothered asking the question.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
I telephoned Hanna. I had not wanted to involve her while I still thought I might avoid the Achim problem; I knew she would push me to curse him. Now, however, that I had made up my own mind to do it I needed help. With my extra workload, it was not going to be easy to get away from the bakery for the hours it would take me to reach Gertrud’s house on foot. The only person I could think of who had their own car was Max, but I didn’t want to tell him what I was going to do. It would almost certainly lead to him making demands of his own and, worse, he would tell Jochen. I couldn’t face Jochen if he found out what I was up to; in fact, in truth I was a little afraid of what he might do. That was what Rote Gertrud’s magic had done for all of us: it had granted my wishes, but it had crept into the spaces between us like a weed thrusting itself up between stones and forced us apart. The only one of my friends who hadn’t demanded anything for themselves so far was Hanna and even then I suspected she was simply biding her time. My options were running out, though.
At any rate Hanna had a driver’s licence, even though she didn’t have her own car. I prayed she would be able to arrange something.
‘The bastard,’ was the first thing she said when I told her what Achim had done. The second was: ‘You’ve got to hex him.’
It was a relief in a way that she suggested it before I did, but all the same I felt a twinge of conscience. I knew Hanna was fascinated with what had been happening since that first night in the woods and also that there was something unhealthy about her fascination. I had seen it in the gleam in her eyes, the enigmatic smile on her lips. Involving her in this made me feel as though I was encouraging someone to do something they had better have left alone, like trying a dangerous drug or playing chicken on a railway line. Yet there was no other option, was there? I closed my eyes, my knuckles white around the telephone receiver.
‘I know. But Hanna, it has to be now. I can’t carry on like this.’ My voice was rising. ‘I need to get to – you know – there. But it takes hours to walk.’
‘We’ll ask Max.’
‘No!’ I almost shouted. With an effort I made myself calm down. ‘Not Max. Not anybody else. It has to be a secret.’
There was a pause. ‘OK. Give me some time. I’ll be over later with a car.’
‘Not Max’s,’ I said. ‘He’ll know we’re up to something.’
‘Not Max’s,’ she agreed, and hung up.
I went into my bedroom and rummaged through the drawer of the desk I had used for homework years ago. I found a small notepad and a couple of pens. I tested the pens on a piece of paper to check that they both worked. I wasn’t taking any chances; I was going to do this properly. I glanced around the room, at the fading posters and the discarded dolls propped up on a high shelf, at the slippery pile of magazines on the floor. An unlikely lair for a witch. I shut the desk drawer, a little too hard, and ran from the room.
Downstairs in the bakery all hell had broken loose. It looked as though a large coach party had turned up unannounced. Every table was crowded with customers. Some of them had already been served, but the majority were still waiting, some with arms crossed and furrowed brows. Bianca Müller and another waitress were moving about among them with harried expressions, like relief workers at an overcrowded refugee camp. As soon as I came in, their eyes turned towards me and I could read the message in them as clearly as if they had shouted it across the room: Where are you going? You should be helping us.
It was quite plain that I could not afford to leave the bakery for long. I could sense the querulous demands of the impatient customers and the harassed staff as powerfully as if they had been grabbing at me with their hands, trying to hold me fast. The short walk to the front door felt like running the gauntlet. I dared not stop to ask either of the waitresses whether they needed anything, or to tell them that I would not be long. It would be akin to steering a boat into the heart of a whirlpool: I would never manage to extricate myself once I was dragged in. I stepped out on to the doorstep, praying that Hanna would come soon, before someone – probably Bianca, who had looked thoroughly irked – had the idea of coming after me. I did my best to position myself at the corner of the bakery, out of sight of both the windows. I felt horribly guilty, but I told myself there was nothing for it. I had to get to the ruined house in the Eschweiler Tal; I had to do something about Achim. I knew that time was running out, like a gladiator who is astonished to find himself alive at the end of a bloody combat, but knows that tomorrow the beasts will have him for sure. If Achim were removed, I would be faced with the immediate problem of how to keep the kitchen running without him. If he stayed, with one hand on other people’s money and the other trying to worm its way down the front of their clothes, there would be no staff and no business left at all within a very short time. It has to work, I thought.
CHAPTER FORTY
I had been waiting for about ten minutes when a car came nosing up the cobbled street. I gave it a glance, but then looked away, disappointed. It was a silver-grey Mercedes saloon. I had faith in Hanna’s ability to borrow a vehicle, but she was not going to come up with anything like that.
The driver sounded the horn twice, impatiently, and I looked again. To my astonishment, it was Hanna behind the wheel – and not a moment too soon. As I pushed myself away from the wall and started towards the car, the front door opened and Bianca Müller flounced out, with an expression on her face that would have soured every cream cake in the bakery.
‘Tschüss,’ I said over my shoulder as I ran for the Mercedes’s passenger door. I knew I was going to pay for it later, but at that moment my only concern was to get away before she caught me.
I slid into the seat, pulled the door shut and clipped on my seat belt. I had a strange sense of déjà vu as the car pulled away from the bakery, Bianca vanishing behind us just as Frau Kessel had done the day Kai had picked me up. It seemed that wherever I went, I left a trail of irritated people behind me.
As we rounded the corner I said, ‘Where did you get this car?’
‘It’s my father’s,’ said Hanna.
‘And he let you borrow it?’ I asked incredulously.
Hanna didn’t take her eyes off the road. ‘Yes.’
I could smell clean leather and some sort of fresh smell like pine, as though someone had cleaned the dashboard recently. Herr Landberg was a prize pedant and ferociously status-conscious. A king of the local shooting club, he liked nothing better than to parade around in hunting green, looking as though his silver buttons would barely do up over the swell of his own self-importance. I couldn’t imagine him allowing his teenage daughter to take out a treasure like this.
‘Did you take it without asking him?’
She shrugged. ‘He’s OK with it.’
I didn’t believe that for a minute, but I didn’t contradict her. I felt suddenly overwhelmed. Hanna was the only one of my supposed friends who wasn’t pestering me half to death to wish things for her. And now she was risking her neck for me, risking a row of truly titanic proportions if her parents found out what she had done. Tears were suddenly pricking at my eyes. I had not expected this feeling of relief. It was as though a limb made numb by perishing cold was suddenly coming back to life before the warmth of a blazing hearth. I had known I was alone, but I had not realized how terribly I had felt it until this moment. If Hanna had not been driving, I would have hugged her.
‘Steffi?’ she said suddenly, interrupting my thoughts. ‘Look, if you’re going to curse Achim … ’
Oh no. Here it comes. Now Hanna’s going to ask me to wish just one thing for her. But to my surprise, she didn’t.
‘Why don’t you wish for something else – something for yourself?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. I raked my fingers through my hair.
‘I just want Achim gone,’ I said.
‘Well, look, we could … ’ She paused. ‘You could wish for anything.’ She glanced over at me. ‘Steffi, what do you need?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said stupidly.
‘Something?’ asked Hanna. Her voice was very low and there was a curious edge to it. ‘Someone?’ she said.
I thought briefly of Kai von Jülich, how I had wished for him. I didn’t know whether it was the taint of the witch’s influence or whether he had always hidden his cloven hooves under the cloak of those golden good looks, but I thought I would never wish for anyone’s affections again. I would take my chances with love like everyone else, and if I ended up alone, so be it. I shook my head.
Then it came to me. I had no idea how I was going to keep the bakery kitchen running if Achim really disappeared. My mother might help, but that depended on whether she felt able to leave my father. If the bakery had to close for a while, it would be catastrophic. If we couldn’t afford a new coffee machine, we certainly couldn’t afford to lose our entire revenue for weeks. But if we suddenly had a lot of money … It would be even harder to explain to my mother than the five hundred euros that were still stuffed in a vase in my sister’s room, but this was an emergency.
‘Money,’ I said suddenly. ‘To keep the bakery afloat.’
‘Money for the bakery,’ said Hanna flatly.
I thought I knew what she was thinking: What a drag. The chance of unlimited power and she’s thinking about the stupid bakery.
‘Yes,’ I said simply. ‘Look,’ I added, seeing the dubious look on her face, ‘I don’t want to ask for anything else. Other things – they seem to go wrong.’
I was thinking of the disastrous date with Kai von Jülich. Also, I was thinking of Jochen and the day he had visited me while my parents were at mass. If Hanna had some grudge like Jochen’s, I hoped and prayed that she would not share it. I supposed that this was the moment when I should ask her whether there was anything she wanted me to wish for, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Once the offer was made, I could hardly rescind it, and yet I could not face the thought of asking the question as casually as though I were asking if she wanted me to bring something back from the shops for her.
She didn’t ask for anything for herself, though, and when she spoke again I felt instantly guilty.
‘The money,’ she said. ‘How much would you need?’
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The ritual itself was quickly done. Afterwards, as we picked our way down the hill from the ruined house, I felt suddenly tired. It should have been easier going downhill, but I found myself stumbling over roots and stones, my shoes sliding on the steeper patches, dusty earth crumbling under my feet. She doesn’t want to let us go, I thought, and couldn’t resist shooting a backward glance over my shoulder towards the ruins of Gertrud’s house. Then I missed my footing completely and went down, with a painful wrench to my right ankle.
‘Scheisse.’
I sat in the dirt and nursed my leg. I didn’t think anything was broken, but the sudden sharp pain had brought tears to my eyes. I didn’t want to get up until it had passed.
‘Are you OK?’ asked Hanna, stopping beside me.
I nodded, biting my lip.
‘Can you move it?’
‘Yes … I just want to sit here for a minute, though. Shit.’ I flexed the ankle and then wished I hadn’t.
Hanna sank to her haunches and then slid into a sitting position next to me. ‘Maybe you’ve torn something.’
I shook my head. ‘I’ve just wrenched it. It’ll be all right in a minute.’
We sat side by side for a while in companionable silence, while I rubbed the offending ankle with my fingers. The pain was subsiding. I thought there was no real damage done, although I was not in a hurry to get up and start walking again. It was peaceful here and now that we were a safe distance from Gertrud’s house I felt a certain sense of calm which was sure to end the moment we drove back into town. I would have to face Bianca Müller and Hanna would have to face her father. Far better to sit here a little longer, safe in the knowledge that nobody knew where we were.
Now that the crunching of our footsteps had been stilled and our breathing had quietened, I was able to hear the subtle sounds of the forest quite clearly. A light breeze rustled in the bright green summer leaves. Birds were singing in the treetops. An insect buzzed past me, sawing through the air on its own unknowable business. And then, suddenly and quite distinctly, I heard wood snapping.
I didn’t need to turn my head to know that it came from behind us. From further up the hill. From the direction of Gertrud’s house. I felt sure that the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up; I could feel the skin tingling. My mind was summoning up pictures, pictures so clear that they had a photographic quality to them. Someone stepping out of the ruined doorway of the witch’s house, someone with a face that might be the colour of milk or the colour of ashes under a mane of flaming hair. Feet moving swiftly over the uneven ground. The witch. Following me. Me. The one whose wishes had drawn her power, as a lightning rod draws down the fury of the storm.
I grasped Hanna’s wrist, but I needn’t have bothered as she had heard it too. We stared at each other with open mouths and round eyes.
A rabbit, she mouthed at me, but she looked just as shocked as I did. Neither of us moved a muscle and in the stillness we heard a second snap as someone – or something – put their weight on a dry stick.
I couldn’t release my grip on Hanna’s arm. My mouth was dry. I dared not make a sound. Slowly, with infinite care, I turned to look up the slope behind us.
There was nothing to see – not as yet – but as I listened I heard it again, the sound of dry wood breaking under the weight of someone’s passing.
Stupid, I chided myself. It’s a deer. Or maybe it’s some kid who was hanging about up there. Then: The note. The note with the curse on it. If someone had followed us, had they read it?
But it wasn’t a kid, nor was it a deer. As I sat there on the dry earth, with my fingernails digging into Hanna’s arm, I saw it. A dark flicker of movement, far off among the trees, and suddenly the bright gleam of flaming red hair.
I scrambled to my feet, heedless of my throbbing ankle, and fled down the hillside, with Hanna at my heels.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
We reached the car red-faced and panting, almost choking with the exertion of running down the hill. My ankle was flaring with pain and Hanna had a long scratch on one forearm from running into a sharp twig. I sagged against the side of the Mercedes but dared not sink to the ground. It seemed to me that as soon as Hanna could unlock the car we should get away, putting as much space as we could between ourselves and whatever we had seen. I didn’t even like to say the name aloud, though it was hammering in my head like a painful drumbeat. Rote Gertrud. We had seen the witch, actually seen her, walking in the woods. I yanked on the car door, willing it to open, but Hanna was still fumbling with the keys.
Finally I heard the central locking click. I tore the door open, almost fell over myself in my haste to get inside, slammed the door and sat shivering in the passenger seat. I glanced out of the window at the shadowy border of the woods, willing there to be no sign of the black-clad figure, then squeezed my eyes shut, unable to bear the tension of looking. I heard Hanna getting into the driver’s seat and the door closing.
‘Go,’ I said. ‘Drive.’ My teeth were chattering.
The engine roared into life. There was another hail of gravel on the bodywork as the car pulled away; another focus for Herr Landberg’s fury when Hanna got the car home. At that moment, however, I couldn’t have cared less. Herr Landberg might ground Hanna for taking the car; he might ask both of us for a month’s wages to repair the bodywork. But I could not begin to imagine what Gertrud Vorn might want from us in exchange for granting our wishes.
Why now? I asked myself as I clung to the door handle, lurching from side to side as Hanna did a rough three-poin
t turn and then roared back down the track. Why did she appear today and not before? But I remembered the first time we had been at the ruined house, all six of us. We had heard something then and tried to dismiss it as an animal – a deer or a wild pig. Perhaps even then the witch’s eyes had been upon us. Perhaps she would have approached us before, if we had stayed a little longer.
Perhaps it’s payback time, I thought, and my stomach seemed to turn over, nauseatingly, as though I had stumbled at the head of a flight of stairs. Guess who she’s coming for?
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
I got back to the bakery to find that I was too late. The front door was locked, the lights were out and the sign hanging in the front window was turned to closed. I thought of my mother perhaps coming back from the hospital and finding the bakery had shut early. I had no great love for the bakery, conceiving it as something akin to the cage in the gingerbread house in which the wicked witch kept Hänsel and Gretel, but all the same I suffered a massive twinge of conscience at the forlorn look of the place. A hundred metres up the street the pavement seating of a rival bakery was packed, so there was no need to ask where all the customers had gone.
I let myself in, pausing in the dim and empty cafe area to listen for signs of anyone moving around. There was nothing. Emboldened, I peeped into the kitchen. It was deserted, the stainless-steel surfaces gleaming grey and sterile. Evidently Achim Zimmer had departed for the day too. I was alone.
Bianca and the other waitress had carried all the dirty crockery into the kitchen and filled the big industrial dishwasher, and they had wiped down all the tables, but they had forgotten to switch off the coffee machine. I didn’t really like coffee but I poured myself a cup anyway and put three teaspoons of sugar into it, with some vague idea that it would counteract the feeling of shock which still percolated through me like slow poison. I took a sip. It was much too strong, tasting like ashes.